If Canadian pension funds, engineering and construction firms were impressed with the opportunities already available in infrastructure in Australia, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

That was the message delivered Thursday in Toronto by Andrew Robb, Australia’s Minister of Trade and Investment, at a luncheon organized by The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships.

“One of the reasons we have put a very high priority on a dramatic increase in infrastructure spending is to properly capture the opportunities [available] in the region,” said Mr. Robb, noting that in its time in office the new government has signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Japan and is “that close to doing something with China. Those countries represent 51% of our exports,” he said.

“We need the productivity improvement and we need to position the things we are good at in a way to be able to capture what is a most extraordinary development on our doorstep,” he said adding that over the next 25 years there will be a six-fold increase to three billion people in total in the Asian region’s middle class.

“Those opportunities will mean a lot of challenges and we need to manage it,” added Mr. Robb whose staff handed journalists a brochure detailing the country’s major infrastructure pipeline.

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One page of that brochure is devoted to transport projects with a price tag of at least A$500-million (in all A$80-billion is at stake); another page focuses on asset privatizations. Mr. Robb said that Australia has a A$700-billion infrastructure deficit. In 2012, the Canadian infrastructure report estimated there were $171-billion of municipal assets (roads, drinking water, wastewater and storm water) that were either in very poor or fair physical condition.

Mr. Robb said the government’s objectives about building and selling assets can be “married” with the objectives of investors including Canada’s defined pension plans.

“We will give more concessions, remove more of the barriers, there will be more seamless trade and investment activity by harmonizing the rules and understanding properly the motivations and incentives and disincentives that would apply to your interests in Australia,” added Mr. Robb.

A key element of Australia’s openness is a recent measure, known as the Asset Recycling Initiative, that was included in the recent federal budget, the first by the new government.

That measure provides that country’s states and territories (the provinces) with a financial incentive to sell assets and use the proceeds to fund infrastructure investment.

The incentive is in the form of a 15% bonus payment that’s paid by the federal government to the lower governments when they privatize 100% owned assets. The federal government set aside A$5-billion over a two-year period, which means, at most, it expected A$33-billion of asset sales.

So far the three states – Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria – have announced plans to sell more than A$50-billion of assets.

“It has set the infrastructure world alight,” said Mr. Robb when referring to the measure, he believes is the first of its kind in the world. Mr. Robb added that the A$5-billion pot can be increased and said A$50-billion in proposed sales includes “poles and wires,” and ports.

Presumably, those assets will be available for Canadian pension funds to purchase. Certainly, Canadian pension funds – notably CPPIB and Ontario Teachers’ – have been busy since they already own a mixture of roads, ports and desalination plants.